


A Family Tradition

by Sapphy



Series: Fairytale of New York [4]
Category: Constantine (Comic), DCU (Comics), Hellblazer & Related Fandoms, Justice League Dark (Comics)
Genre: Backstory, Coming Out, Country & Western, Dysfunctional Family, Families of Choice, Homophobia, Multi, Period-Typical Homophobia, Period-Typical Racism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-18
Updated: 2017-05-18
Packaged: 2018-11-02 07:21:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,073
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10939689
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sapphy/pseuds/Sapphy
Summary: A slow grin has been spreading over John's face since the conversation began, and now it's so wide he looks like the Cheshire cat. “Oh my God,  that's hilarious. Mr 'only the Cure understand my pain' listens to country and western.”





	A Family Tradition

**Author's Note:**

  * For [celestialbisexual](https://archiveofourown.org/users/celestialbisexual/gifts).



> A giveaway prize of the lovely Celestial-Bisexual
> 
> The title comes of the Hank Williams Jr song of the same name.

“Hey Nick, what's this?”

Zee looks up from her book to see John standing over Nick, holding an ancient Sony Walkman. “No idea. Not mine.”

“Yeah, and I'd even believe it if the Walkman didn't have a cassette in it labelled ‘mix-tape for Nicky’.”

Nick looks almost scared. “Did you… did you listen to it?”

“Course. Was hardly gonna turn down a chance like that was I? Is it all Dolly Parton?”

“No!”

“No?”

“No. It's… other country singers.”

A slow grin has been spreading over John's face since the conversation began, and now it's so wide he looks like the Cheshire cat. “Oh my God, that's hilarious. Mr 'only the Cure understand my pain' listens to country and western.”

Nick grabs the Walkman from John, clutching it to his chest. “It was a gift!”

“Yeah? Some pretty girl trying to get in you pants?” Nick's starting to look genuinely distressed, but John doesn't seem to have noticed. “Did you take her to prom? Did you screw in the back of her daddy's pick up?”

“No! Don't be disgusting!” There’s a long silence, as even John seems to have noticed that he's gone too far, and then Nick says quietly, “My sister gave it too me.”

“You never told us you had a sister,” Zee says softly, moving closer to Nick, and pulling John down onto the sofa beside her so he's not looming.

“I don't,” Nick says, head down so he doesn't have to make eye contact. His accent is showing through, the way it only does when he's feeling emotional or nostalgic. “Not, not really. We were in the same foster home for a year. Her mom was dead and her daddy was a drunk. She got taken into care.

“I was a dick to her, but she never gave up trying to be my friend. In the end I had to give in. She said she'd always wanted a big brother, and I'd always wanted....” He trails off, but Zee would bet good money he'd been going to say ‘a family’.

“She loved country music. She always singin’. Ridiculous cheesy songs about falling in love, and getting divorced, and getting cheated on. She didnt care that it wasnt cool, and she was too popular for most people to give her any shit over it.” He laughs softly. “She was… she was every positive stereotype there is about Southern women. She could make friends with anyone, she was loyal… She'd give anyone a second chance, no matter what they did, but never a third. She was two years younger than me, but you should heard her lay into the school football captain when she heard him bad mouthing me! She believed in God, with all her heart, but she never used it as a stick to beat folks, it just made her kind.

“Prom in senior year, I took this girl Latoya Spencer. My foster parents… they never said nothing racist, but you could see them thinking it. Plenty of the kids at school didn't have their restraint. But Em, she chipped in some of her allowance to buy Latoya a corsage because I didn't have enough, and she got detention for yelling at a kid she heard talking shit about ‘race mixing’. Most places weren't that bad, even back then, but this wasn't a big place, an’ just about every white person you met had a confederate flag on their car, or their house. Things weren't great for the black kids.”

“But you took Latoya anyway?”

“She used to tease me for listening to weird white boy music, and not liking hot food, but she didn't ever mean it meanly. We were friends, I guess, and neither of us had anyone we'd rather go with, so we decided to go together.

“Em gave me the tape that night. Latoya had borrowed her dad's car, and we played the tape on the way to prom and back. It was fun. More fun than I thought prom could ever be, for someone like me.”

His gaze is unfocused, looking at his memories, and Zee lays a careful hand on his leg, just reminding him that they're here, that he's not alone in the past.

“And I thought, well, Em had been so supportive, and she'd defended me, and made me a mix-tape, and she hadn't seemed phased at all by me taking a black girl to prom. So that summer… I came out to her. She was the first person I ever told.”

“What happened,” John asked softly. He sounds like he already knows, and she wonders, not for the first time, about what coming out had been like for him, if he'd ever told his family or just moved to London and started over.

“Em… she was shocked. She… she said she needed time to process it, that she needed space. That she would pray for me. And then two days later we got the message that her dad wanted her back.

“We never talked about it. It was a couple of weeks before she left, but she was busy, and we never got a chance.

“I never saw her again after she left. I wrote to her once, but the letter got returned, so I guess she moved.”

Zee doesn't know what to say, doesn't know what she could possibly do to touch this festering wound in his heart.

For once, John knows better than her. He gets up and moves to crouch in front of Nick, his hand on Nick's knees to steady himself.

“I'm sorry I played the tape without asking,” he says, voice quiet but intense. “But I'm glad you told us this. I'm glad you trusted us. You want to try and find her?”

“I thought about it,” Nick admits. “No to visit or anythin’, but just… a letter. Something to tell her that I made it through. That shit got better. But she put me behind her and she didn't look back.”

“She was a kid. Did she love you? We're you her brother?”

Nick lucks his lips. “Yeah. Not… not for long. But yeah.”

“Then we'll find her,” John says firmly. “Cheryl doesn't know fuck all about how I live, and she hates most of what she does know, but she still wants to know that I'm okay.”

“We'll find her,” Zee agrees, glad to have something tangible she can offer. “We'll find her.”

**Author's Note:**

> Comments are love


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